


Low batteries

by Subtle_Shenanigans



Series: As The Pendulum Swings, And The Grandfather Chimes [19]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Asperger’s syndrome, Depression, Dissociation, Do not post to another site, Dysphoria, Gen, Insomnia, Mental Exhaustion, Mental Health Issues, Second person POV, Trauma, np beta we die like men, unspecified events, vent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22245325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Subtle_Shenanigans/pseuds/Subtle_Shenanigans
Summary: Insomnia sucks.
Series: As The Pendulum Swings, And The Grandfather Chimes [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/762417
Kudos: 4





	Low batteries

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been in a weird headspace for awhile now and I think I can chalk it up to exhaustion.
> 
> I’m safe and I will be okay; I just wanted to get some things out of my system.
> 
> Insomnia has been really bad this week. Keep waking up fully awake.

There’s a creak in the house, wood floors (your floors are not wood - it’s merely what’s left of the dredges of sleep seeping through the cracks of reality) crackling as they settle.

You’re awake again.

You’re so tired.

Why can’t you just stay asleep?

You usually wake up four times or more a night, groggy and falling back asleep after using the bathroom. But it’s been two or three times only now, but each time your brain is fully switched on and _won’t stop_.

You’re not worried or anxious or depressed when it happens, just awake. Awake awake awake _please let me sleep_.

The new medication you’ve been on says it’ll make you groggy, not wake you up. Plus, you’ve been on it a month so you doubt it’s that. You’re still keeping an eye out, just in case.

  
You’ve been groggy and cloudy-headed during the day since November, feeling out of place like a wandering thought rather than a person. Your body keeps changing size on you, hands too long, too big, too clutzy. You’re tall, gangly. Now you’re more heavy-set, sturdy.

(When did you start limping up the stairs?)

Your body is not your own and is beyond your control. You watch on, apathetically. Confused.

You feel like nothing and no one in the most curious sense of absence. Like the reader of a book. You can see it all, can process it somewhat. But you yourself are no part of the story.

You’re so, so tired.

You want to nap but you need to get things done.

You’re needed but you feel intrusive; you’re doing everything wrong again but if you avoid involvement then you are selfish.

You’re sick again; it feels tight when you breathe deep and you’re coughing up some phlegm. You keep bouncing between 99F and 100F.

It doesn’t matter; you’re told everyone gets sick and you should push, push, push yourself. (This, from someone else chronically ill, like yourself, who knows how horrible it is to catch a normal sickness on top of it.)

  
  


You’re so tired.

Your eyes burn, are heavy; so you want to cry? You’ve forgotten how. It’s hard. How does it even work, when you’re used to your feelings being inconvenient at best?

  
(Not that you even know what you’re feeling most of them time.)

You drag yourself to work hours, and then when you get back you are stuck in bed. But you can’t nap because then you won’t sleep the night. And then on days off you have errands, and chores on top of that, and is there time for sleep? Is there a way to truly sleep?

You’re paranoid most days that something bad will happen. Sometimes you must do things to appease this. Sometimes there is nothing to do but be strung-out with heightening fear.

Some days the pit is deep and wide and you want nothing, you are nothing. You wish to disappear, swallowed up by nothing.

But mostly, you’re just tired.


End file.
